For what it's worth, I've always had the feeling that the whiting-up of mimes not only has no racial reference, but it's to make the performer as generic as possible. Witness that the white is usually done as a mask, ending at the jawline or so.

Also I'll observe (for whatever it's worth, which may be nothing) that the "white" populace is NOT really white. They (we) are sort of pinkish to tannish. And the "black" population is seldom what one could call black. Only very occasionally have I ever seen an individual whose skin color was what I'd call black. VERY dark, yes, sometimes a blue-black, but a real close-to-black complexion is rare, in my experience.

I think the observation above about Elizabeth's habitual "whiting-up" is valuable. If the actress does that sort of "whiting-up", rather than "pinking up", so to speak, an argument could be made for it. Even so, in what somebody says is a BNP area, and with what seems to be political intentions, I look askance.

Dave Oesterreich